- February 01, 2022
MIT's Global Teaching Labs program allowed Kimia to immerse herself in a new cultural community, make lasting connections with a new family, improve and implement her teaching skills and experience a new world.
When Kimia was extracting strawberry DNA in her kitchen as a child growing up in New York, she never dreamed she would one day be leading the same laboratory exercises as a teacher in Spain.
Challenging but rewarding
Kimia spent one month in January 2018 in two cities around Barcelona, Spain. She is studying Biology at MIT and takes Spanish classes as well, and she thought it would be an amazing experience to teach classes in biology and chemistry at schools in Spain. Her experience teaching classes as a TA at MIT definitely came in handy. The new international experience was challenging but also really rewarding. Kimia got to make lasting connections with her host families in Roses and Vic and got to know her students really well in both cities. Throughout her time, she got to hike mountains, walk along beaches, cruise through Barcelona streets (windowshopping!) and run through city centers, exploring culture and geography each day after class. She appreciated the chance to get to know Spanish culture a bit and really looks forward to returning and reconnecting with her host families in the years to come. Kimia worked for two weeks in Roses, Spain, and another two weeks in Vic. In both locations, she was teaching biology and chemistry along with labs and some other social science classes to high-school age students. She was able to put together lessons to showcase the technology side of research and innovations in biology while also engaging the students to use their newly-learned genetics knowledge to make group projects and presentations. The host schools also organized conferences where she had the chance to present to large audiences her path toward college and medicine. The students keep in touch with Kimia and know that they can count on her for any help/advice in their future applications to university!
Life after work
After school Kimia would often help students individually with tricky topics in biology, and would then visit the town movie theater with her host sister, or engage in the process of preparing Carnival costumes (which were coming up in less than a few weeks while she was in Spain). She also got to visit Barcelona on the weekends, and take a walk around Gaudí’s most famous parks and buildings all around the city. Mostly, though, she loved hanging around in Roses, or Vic (where she spent the second half of her time in Spain), to get to know the people, and get to taste all the creamy coffee, and mediterranean style restaurants in town. She also enjoyed taking walks by the beach at sunset when she was in Roses, and was amazed by the many others who were doing the same, and were interested in hearing her story of growing up in the United States. She found the balance between work and life to be amazingly portrayed in her host family and their community, and she really appreciated the chance to get to be immersed in that culture during her month in Spain. This balance is something she hoped to carry with her even when she got back to MIT.
Absorbing culture and expanding skills
While in Spain, Kimia was engaged in not only teaching biology and chemistry at school, but also in learning all she could about Spanish culture from her host family. She managed her time to plan stimulating courses, and also loved getting to know her host sisters and host parents. All along, she had the opportunity to also practice her Spanish within the community. She will surely bring this cultural experience with her on her medical career. She hopes to pursue teaching and medicine side-by-side and although she has explored the teaching opportunity through formal assistant-teaching positions at MIT, teaching and learning to work with others in Spain has allowed her to expand the skills in her teaching arsenal. She looks forward to putting these new skills to test in her future teaching endeavors.